The match game
Stephen Petronio's collaborations range from dazzling to dull.

By Rita Felciano

STEPHEN PETRONIO BUILDS phrases of extravagant complexity and speed, then piles them on top of each other so it becomes tough to know whether his dancers are coming or going. Petronio's choreography can simultaneously look spontaneous and seem as if it were chiseled in stone. While it's exhilarating to watch, it isn't easy to grasp. As a viewer, you're always playing catch-up; ultimately, all you can do is go along for the ride – and sometimes the ride can seem a little long.

Petronio displays a deft touch when choosing collaborators. In the past he has worked with musicians such as Michael Nyman, the Beastie Boys, Yoko Ono, and Lenny Pickett; visual artists such as Anish Kapoor and Charles Atlas; and fashion designers Manolo, Leigh Bowery, and David Dalrymple. Petronio's most recent San Francisco program (Feb. 6 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) included compositions from Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, and Einstürzende Neubauten's Blixa Bargeld. Cindy Sherman transferred the sculptural backdrops of her more recent photographs into a different realm, creating a stunning set for the company's newest creation, The Island of Misfit Toys: a totem pole of gigantic baby-face masks and two oversize floppy dolls, one of which had only half a head.

For the opener, the 46-year-old Petronio returned to the stage in a powerful solo. Broken Man may have referenced an accident that almost ended his career a few years ago, but it also referred to a more generalized sense of malaise. Dressed in half a coat, tied to his chest, Petronio looked bifurcated – at loose ends yet also hemmed in. Except for some lunges and explosive thrusts into space, Man's gestural language focused on what it meant to be inside his particular body. Fierce physicality coexisted with wilting stasis. Petronio's long, eloquent arms at times cooperated with each other; at other moments, they pulled him in different directions. Pushing his fists down along his torso, he seemed to be trying to launch himself out of his skin. When his torso slumped, it rediscovered its spine. His hand repeatedly running down his leg looked both soothing and exploring. Bargeld's uncharacteristically soft, melancholy score, at first restricted to keyboard, enveloped the dancer like a fall evening's mist.

City of Twist's frenetic citizens looked like they had been caught unawares in the middle of the night. The dancers – men dressed in black jackets and white underwear, women in black slips – seemed trapped in an enclosed space where outside forces whipped them around, further impinging on their autonomy. Ken Tabachnick's dark, excellent lighting design suggested a quasi-Piranesi environment, with cathedral windows that looked out on brick walls and fire escapes.

City was indirectly influenced by the events surrounding Sept. 11, 2001. Despite an initial vision of individuals losing control, what emerged was an image of a world surprisingly humane. Marked by high-velocity twists and turns, the work dazzled due to the precision of its attacks and constantly shifting trajectories. It also revealed the glorious individuality of Petronio's dancers; in particular, Ashleigh Leite's closing solo summarized the New York City-based choreographer's perspective on his city. Her tumultuous contortions and fierce contractions spoke of chaos and pain, but her planted feet and assertive stomps also proclaimed strength and survival.

There is a history of opium-induced dreams and doll dances in ballet that Petronio may or may not have been conscious of when he assembled The Island of Misfit Toys. (Several fresh intrusions of ballet-inspired vocabulary – somewhat unusual additions to this postmodernist's bag of tricks – suggest he was.) Sherman's macabre designs and Reed's somnolent songs set a tone of suspended animation, but Petronio didn't pull the individual sections together into something larger. Each of the semi-ironic dances grew out of and commented on one of Reed's songs, such as the female duet for "I'm Waiting for the Man," the collapsing solo to "Science of the Mind," or the manipulating, body-hopping closing ensemble "Perfect Day." But somehow this jaundiced fairy tale about adults who don't grow up never found its center.

A rare Petronio excursion into a quasi-narrative, Island opened with him sitting on a chair, his back to the audience. As Reed recited Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven," he smoked. Three men in children's pajamas frolicked center stage, then gradually approached the now-nodding Petronio. For the women, designer Tara Subkoff of Imitation of Christ created micro-miniskirts that suggested those of cheerleaders or ballet dancers – a brilliant metaphor for the stiff-legged, vacant-faced dolls they became. The piece, unfortunately, grew heavy-handed; it dragged even though the dancers brilliantly performed the intricate and – as usual – technically involving encounters. Ultimately, Island suggested neither enchantment nor nightmare.